Dove Lane

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Part 2 of some thoughts about having fun with KM in the work place. This part includes premises and examples, as well as references to several good sites on the Web that offer fun ideas for the work place.

I started to think about how people can succeed, or why they don’t, at creating a business out of the hobbies they love. It’s painful to see loved ones pour their hearts and souls into an entrepreneurial effort, only to give up or fail. That made me think about all the components involved in carrying an idea through from concept to success. Here is my list. We know from our careers that we aren’t good at everything. Maybe it would be helpful for would-be entrepreneurs to assess their own areas of strength and interest up front, so they can get support where they are weak before the weakness becomes a roadblock that can crash the business.

None of these is worth a full blog posting, but I found these things to be fascinating or very promising, and thought I’d blog them all anyway for my own reference. WoW and psychotherapy, Betterverse.org, brain controllers, altering time perception, cloning heroic dogs and regenerating lost teeth.

When is the Twitter terminology going to settle and standardize? It’s too faddish for it to last as it is — how many ways can one talk about bird chirps? Twitter users were first called tweeters and their posts were tweets. Soon they were twitterers writing tweeps, or in the parlance, twitting tweeps (or should that be twitting tweeters?). (with updates)

If I were an HR director, I’d have ask seriously whether recruiting in a virtual world is worth my staff’s time and effort today. The payoff just isn’t yet there. The fundamentals of virtual worlds and technologies are moving into the mainstream for sure, but it will be 5-10 years before they are so ubiquitous that virtual world recruiting will be truly effective. On the plus side, it’s still inexpensive…

It’s a little odd for me to be sending this out, but I decided this is a good year to do it. I am not asking you to support my candidate, my politics, my choices. I am asking you to, please, support your candidate, your politics and your choices. It’s your future. Please vote.

Users and organizations face disappointments with today’s virtual worlds. It’s time for leaders and aspiring leaders to become knowledgeable of virtual worlds and to contribute to making them the positive and constructive platforms they will become. How? Take any one of these 11 disappointments, and start a crusade to change it! There are reputations and careers and satisfaction to be achieved by those who get involved now. This is the ground floor of a groundswell.

I disagree, however, with the assessment that SL is a “barren wasteland” or dying. What is dying is the hype that generated a lot of curious one-time visitors last year. Only people who are inexperienced in virtual worlds would measure their effectiveness on the amount of traffic. That is the equivalent of counting page hits on a web site. No one can experience the potential of virtual worlds by dropping in once or twice for two hours and assuming they have seen enough.

Here is my suggested definition of “Virtual Worlds”: A persistent simulated space inhabited by multiple concurrent or nonconcurrent users who share a sense of physical embodiment that enables them to interact imaginatively with others and experience real world outcomes. Think of it as a concentrated definition. Here’s how I got there…

Gaming provides a rich and unmatched opportunity for people of all ages to learn valuable lessons about human nature, good and evil, the value of preparation, equality, dealing with diversity, leadership, economics, merchandising, setting priorities, and team play. Who knew that games taught such important life lessons? I have noticed that…

As I’ve said before, the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned about the long-term value of Wikipedia. It’s widely cited, but is it good? How do we know?

26% of the compromised computers used in botnets are in the US. Four out of five computers connected to the Web have some type of spyware or adware installed on them, with or without the owner’s knowledge. Some futurists predict an event called The Singularity to occur in the next generation — an inevitable consequence of natural human competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. Once the Singularity point is reached (estimated now to be around 2023), we will enter the Post-Human era. Botnets may one of those leapfrog occurrences that have unintended consequences in furthering the emergence of Super Human intelligence.

Superstring theory describes a universe made of strings of vibrating particles and delicate membranes. While not yet proven, it unites general relativity and quantum mechanics, and may unite all the four forces of nature. Proving string theory may also confirm the existence of alternate dimensions. Thank you NOVA for The Elegant Universe: the 11th Dimension. Highly recommended viewing.

Why, after nearly 15 years of more or less organized thinking, debate and studying of KM, haven’t we collectively been able to define what knowledge management is, create an unassailable model of how it works, and perhaps more importantly, sell the KM value proposition to organizations that clearly need it? Here are some penetrating insights into the state of the profession.

Following up on my previous post about Fahey and Prusak’s 11 Deadliest Sins of KM, I decided to offer two more views. First, an example of the 11 Deadliest Sins being cited in a research paper. Secondly, my own suggested Axioms and Corollaries of KM.

I believe the concept of knowledge hoarding is largely a myth. We’ve all heard stories about how some go-to people in organizations refuse (overtly or covertly) to write down what they know in order to make themselves indispensible to the organization. So-called knowledge hoarders are strong indicators of other organizational issues that need to be resolved for KM to be successful. We need to understand the root cause of any hoarding behaviors and how widespread they really are in order to elevate the problem to the organizational level where it can be addressed.

A 50,000 foot view of knowledge and why it can’t be “managed.”

Based on my own experiences, here are a few of the things I believe to be true about KM.